


Everything Tilted and Still

by OracleGlass



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Post-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OracleGlass/pseuds/OracleGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Mosca's Searching for Inspiration ficathon.</p><p>Kaylee thinks that sometimes what you want and what you think you want get knotted up, and sometimes it's hard to sort out the tangles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Tilted and Still

This isn't porno,

it's a love story-

-tongues everywhere

 

and desultory lines. A woman on

the screen keens like a broken radio.

This one tastes like Americana,

the burnished chrome of dashboard

instruments.

 

The one thing Kaylee wanted most in the world was Wash. Well, no – not Wash, precisely, because while he generally was very sweet, he wasn't exactly her type and besides which, Zoe would not take it well – but someone of her own just like Wash was for Zoe. Sometimes this need for somebody to be all hers gets tangled up in her need for something to fix, something to dig her hands into and make hum smoothly without clashing or friction, but maybe both needs were the same thing at the bottom of it all. Anyway, Kaylee wanted what Wash and Zoe had. It seemed a mite unlikely to happen, flying around all the time like they do, with people prone to shoot at them.

Sometimes she'd come around a corner and find them pressed together against a bulkhead, too hasty for each other to find a room, wrapped in each other's arms until you couldn't tell where Wash left off and Zoe began. Kaylee'd smile at them, move along the passageway, and find her own consolation in the hammock swinging in the engine room. Serenity's humming and clanking made her feel a little bit less lonely, even if there was nobody to snuggle up warm against.

Now, Kaylee comes around a corner and finds Zoe staring into space, blinking rapidly, her expression furious. Kaylee hasn't dared to smile at her because she's not sure what would happen after that so she moves awkwardly past, head down, eyes on her toes. Nights, she pretends she doesn't hear any muffled noises coming from Zoe's room when she walks past to run maintenance on Serenity's cooling system. She once had a mental picture of Zoe crying, face pressed into her pillow, and the thought was so startling and so wrong that Kaylee stopped dead in her tracks, too confused to move. After a minute she moved on, and never said nothing because nobody else was. Well, maybe Mal had gone to Zoe in private. But that was between the two of them and none of her concern.

Kaylee looks at Simon's broad back as he sleeps and wonders how long it will be until he leaves her. She thinks he does love her, in some sense of the word, but sometimes she'll look at his face while he's watching River, and she knows that whatever they have, it ain't for keeps. Times when she feels that way, she gets up and goes forward into Serenity's cockpit as the ship ghosts quietly along under autopilot. Serenity sounds different here than she does in the engine room; her purr is muted, tamed, obedient to a guiding hand.

This place used to be Wash's domain. If Kaylee squints, she can still see the shadow of his hand on the instrument panel, lying lightly. She never really thought about it before, but despite the captain's love for Serenity, Wash and Kaylee knew her moods the best, responded to her needs without thought, knew her guts and her glory and her small tragedies, too. Kaylee somehow hadn't thought of Wash in those terms before, but that didn't make it any the less true. They were partners in all the ship's schemes. Kaylee thinks that she loves Serenity with a precise and prideful love, and Mal loves Serenity with an obsessive and overwhelming love, and Wash loved her with a soaring, tricksy love. The thing about Serenity was that there was room for all those loves, and more.

Kaylee goes back to the engine room and climbs into her hammock, closes her eyes, and falls asleep to the whirring of the engines.


End file.
